Volodymyr Zelensky

Volodymyr Zelensky (25 January 1978-) was a Ukrainian politician and comedian who ran for President of Ukraine in 2018 as the Servant of the People candidate.

Biography
Volodymyr Zelensky was born in Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union in 1978 to a Jewish family, and his father worked in Mongolia for four years. Zelensky studied at the Kyiv National Economic University, and he became a comedian during the late 1990s, winning the KVN's Major League competition in 1997. He founded Kvartal 95, a popular comedy company in Ukraine, and it soon developed into a major film studio. In 2015, he portrayed the President of Ukraine in the television series Servant of the People, and he decided to run for the real office in 2018 at the head of the "Servant of the People" political party. He donated ₴1 million to the Ukrainian army during the Donbass War, but he spoke out against the banning of Russian artists from Ukraine, even as Russia called for a boycott of Zelensky's works due to his political activism. Zelensky swore to bring professional, decent people to power and to restore trust in politicians, and he supported European Union and NATO membership referendums in the country, anti-corruption bills, election reform, NATO-standard salaries for the military, a tax amnesty and a 5% flat tax for big business, the attraction of investment in Ukraine, and negotiations with Russia to end the Donbass War.